Sometimes it doesn’t pay to know what you’re worth.

In the fickle world of the job search, many advise that we should be confident when discussing our salary expectations. It isn’t necessarily a good idea to set them crazy high, but making sure that a potential employer knows that you want fair compensation is a necessary step. You want to start as you mean to go on.

The downside of this is that not every company or recruiter is going to be on board with how much you want to be paid. Much of the time, this is a blessing in disguise, because if the amount of money you want is not going to be respected, you probably aren’t going to be either. Nonetheless, this can be a frustrating thing to experience.

One of the disappointments of looking for a new job is that you may be forced to learn that just because an employer didn’t want you doesn’t mean that they didn’t take note of your standards. This makes it all the more important to keep them high, and make sure that you are putting across the best version of your skills and expertise (although ideally, not giving away too much of it for free).